it…out

[it…out] is done. Lindsey and I are closing out our separate blogs and merging them into the new prairiegeeks.com where the journey continues. See you there!

I got a copy of Photoshop Elements 6 a while back and have finally gotten to sit down and play with it tonight. I used some pictures I took of Tommy at the playground earlier this week as fodder. Online tools like picnik are great, but I found Photoshop’s ability to apply lighting and color fixes to only certain areas of the picture to be very handy. And the quick selection tool makes selecting the areas to fix (like too-dark shadows or too-bright highlights) a snap. I originally changed the blue saturation to make the sky look nicer, but it also bumped up the blue in Tommy’s shirt, which looked weird, but the quick select tool let me select the entire sky and adjust it, leaving the shirt’s color intact. This was really just trial and error and plunking through the menus seeing what they did, but I was impressed with what the app can do. Fun!

Original, with dark shadows and washed out flesh.

Touched up with blue-er blues and a more visible Tommy.

This was all done in JPG as I think Lindsey still has the RAWs on her laptop. I just grabbed the beta of Lightroom 2 last night, and it’ll be fun to see what I can do with the RAW file.

You know, that guy from Star Trek.

Tommy’s spilled some ketchup in his yogurt. And ate it. Twice.

Reminds me of how Reeses peanut butter cups got started:

Tommy and I excavated a dinosaur skeleton buried in rock. The rock happened to be chalk and the bones happened to be plastic, but he didn’t seem to mind.

More here

We built a robot duck from a kit the other day.

More here.

If Guitar Hero isn’t quite your thing, there’s always Flute Hero…in Danish.

Click

We went to the zoo on friday for my birthday.

Thea got a kick out of just about everything.

Tommy led the way most of the time and thought long and hard about which way to go.

He also led me through some tight spaces on the jungle floor.

L&T&t really enjoyed seeing the penguins up close.

And I got some funky fish pictures.

T: Daddy?
Me: Yes?
T: Did you know Jesus made you special?
Me: Yes, Tommy. That’s very nice to know, isn’t it?
T: Yeah.
Me: Now pull up your pants and flush so we can get back to dinner.

…and we did. Tommy and I painted his bedroom wall tonight.

Tommy wanted a monkey in the rocket.